Minneapolis City Council considers requiring data collection on encampment clearings

The Minneapolis City Council is considering an ordinance change to boost transparency around encampment clearings — both for what happens to people who are evicted and for how much the removals cost taxpayers.

Community members spoke at a public hearing Wednesday, with the majority voicing their support for the amendment and some using the space to share concerns about living near encampments.

Currently, there is no requirement for the city to keep comprehensive public data when homeless encampments are cleared. The ordinance amendment would require quarterly reports on how many clearings occurred, when and where they occurred and the number of people who may have been impacted. That information would be made available online.

It would also track whether impacted people are immediately connected to housing options, what happens to their belongings during clearings and when they were alerted that they would have to move.

Council member Aurin Chowdhury — who co-authored the amendment with council members Jason Chavez and Aisha Chughtai — said it’s a necessary step toward figuring out the best way to address homelessness.

“We need to be responsible for how your taxpayer dollars are being spent, especially if they are being spent in a way that could be potentially harmful to unhoused individuals, individuals in a neighborhood or our city staff,” Chowdhury said. “We need to be able to ask the question: is this the best use of our city resources? And how can we ask that question and answer it if we do not know? We need this tool in order to address that.”

Minneapolis resident AC Sullivan works as a public defender and was among those who voiced their support for the amendment.

“My clients who are displaced lose contact with myself, their probation officers and their other caseworkers, and often end up back in the custody of the Hennepin County Jail charged with new crimes of poverty that simply would not have happened had they been able to stay in those encampments,” Sullivan said. “The fact that the city has insisted on doubling down on this practice without collecting the relevant outcome data is a dereliction of duty.”

Some community members used the space to voice concerns about living near encampments, including George Lundgren.

“I’m so impressed by all the compassion, and everybody is moved about the pain and suffering of all these people who are homeless. I haven’t heard anything about the pain and suffering … of the people who have to live with these people,” Lundgren said. “They're pooping on my son's property. There's needles, there's condoms. They can't have the kids out in the street.”

Council member Linea Palmisano sought to remove language that would require data on the number of people connected with housing options, arguing that work should be for the county and not the city.

“We should be getting this information and getting it consistently, but I’m not willing to require things that staff simply do not do and cannot be held accountable to provide,” she said.

That change did not pass.

The encampment removal reporting ordinance will be brought to a full council meeting for a vote. It is on the agenda for a Sept. 19 meeting.

The three authors of the proposed amendment have previously introduced two other changes related to the city's homelessness response. That includes an amendment to codify a more humane encampment clearing process and another to regulate safe outdoor spaces for unhoused people.

Public hearings have yet to be held on those amendments.

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